Critical Installation Failure on All Platforms (Conda, Docker, Colab)

General
1

Hello,

I have been trying to install FEniCSx for several days on multiple platforms and have run into critical, show-stopping errors on all of them.

  1. On a clean WSL/Ubuntu environment, installing fenics-dolfinx=0.8.0 from conda-forge leads to a broken ufl library (AttributeError: module 'ufl' has no attribute 'VectorElement').
  2. The official dolfinx/dolfinx:stable Docker container has the exact same AttributeError.
  3. Trying to install an older version, fenics-dolfinx=0.7.3, fails because the dependency fenics-basix=0.7.3 is missing from conda-forge (PackagesNotFoundError).

It seems the FEniCSx installation ecosystem on conda-forge is currently broken for new users trying to get started. Can you please advise?

2

1 and 2: That’s not an error, that’s an interface change. Please search the forum for the new syntax (which was discussed plenty of times), or look at the demos of the corresponding version

can’t comment on 3

The title mention Colab, but you haven’t discussed it. See my project FEM on Colab for the easiest installation there.

3

For an introduction into the new finite element syntax (replacing ufl.FiniteElement, ufl.VectorElement and ufl.TensorElement, see for instance:

What exact commands did you use to create this environment, and what exact command did you use to install the packages?
For instance:

conda create -n test_07 python=3.12
conda activate test_07
conda  install -c conda-forge fenics-dolfinx=0.7.3

works fine for me. However, i would seriously advising against starting on an older version, as we have improved a lot since that release.